Finals, LastFM, Alanis, Oh my!

Long time no blog! Wow, it's been forever since I last updated (Well not FOREVER... but it's been a while based on my blogging habits).

However, I have good reason - this week and last have been utterly insane. Like most students, my classes are drawing to a close and that means final papers, exams, presentations... followed of course, by finals. My finals schedules isn't awful - 1 final test, 1 semi-cumulative exam, 2 cumulative exams (one being in Italian.. eeck), and then a final reflection paper. It could be worse! They're fairly spread out too, which helps my health and sleep.

MUSIC LOVERS, READ:

For this post, I want to share with you a fantastic website a friend told me about a while back. It's called LastFM (www.lastfm.com) and it's bigger in the UK and elsewhere abroad. Still, I'm trying to promote it as much as I can here in the states.

The program runs in the background of your media player of choice (Such as iTunes, Windows Media Player, Winamp, etc.) and it electronically documents what you listen to - this includes what songs you listen to, what artists, and your most played of each.

I'm a music nerd and it's intereseting to see what my listening habits yield for each week. Of course, at the top of my most played artist list is Mrs. Amos. Sheryl Crow and Patty Griffin are currently in a heated race for the second slot, and Alanis Moriessette and Madonna fill the rest of the top 5.

Past generating these charts, LastFM also allows you to network with people of similar tastes. Through these people, you can find out about concerts in your area, similar artists to the ones you listen to, and even access free downloads. It's really fun, really easy, and I highly recommend it.

Speaking of Alanis Morissette, I listened to her a lot earlier (you can see if you go to my LastFM profile, http://www.last.fm/user/JMG88/) and it reminded me of how I discovered her. I would call her my first musical obsession... Indulge me while I share this story:

I remember being at a friend's house in California and Alanis' video for "Ironic" playing on MTV... I was in first grade or second grade. I went home and told my mom I wanted the "tape" with "Rain On Your Wedding Day" on it. At the time, her friend was over and said, "Oh yeah, that's Alanis Morissette." My mom asked if a kid could listen to her and I just remember her friend cackling and saying, "Uhh.. doubt it." She told my my mom about "You Oughta Know, " and then wrote out the lyrics to "Ironic" for me (from memory!). So I at least had that.

From that point on, I BEGGED my mom for the Jagged Little Pill tape. She did buy me the "Ironic" Single (on cassette!) but that's all she budged. I played the heck out of it -  I get really nostalgic when I hear it. I remember playing the tape over and over, flipping it to both sides.

Then.. grandma came to visit...  She said she would buy me something at Wal-Mart and so I told her I wanted the Alanis Morissette tape. She of course said, "Anything you want!" not knowing who she was or that my mom told me I couldn't have it. I went home, ran to my room, and started playing it as fast as I could before my mom could realize what my grandma bought me. During "You Oughta Know," she came in and pressed stop on the player and said, "Jacob! You KNOW I said you couldn't have that tape!" I just kinda looked down. She groaned, pressed play again, and just left the room

From that point on, I played Jagged Little Pill and I consider it the soundtrack of my youth. However, as I went through a huge Spice Girls/pop phase (), I forgot about Alanis and pulled out Jagged Little Pill very rarely. It wasn't until I started buying all my cassettes on CD that I realized Alanis had released a second album. I bought the second record, Supposed Informer Infatuation Junkie when I was in 5th grade? I think?

I've been an avid follower and fan ever since .

She is set to release her fifth studio album entitled Flavors Of Entanglement on June 10. You can download the single, Underneath, at iTunes and also hear clips of a couple of other songs on www.alanis.com

/end Alanis plug.

Everyone, please enjoy your week, take some time to listen to nostalgic music, and relish in the fact that summer is upon us.